Treasure

Axiom: When God speaks, no one has any trouble hearing Him.

I know that I know that God has spoken to me, but I have no recollection of the time or event when He gave me the words that I now carry in my mind. I have a message inside my head - a message from God to me - but I have no memory of when that message was given. At some indeterminate point this summer while on vacation, I knew something that I hadn't known before. I don't know how it got there, but this "message from God" was burned into my mind:

I will be your reward.

God said this to me - I don't know when, I don't know how, I don't know where. I only know that these words are in my head, and I didn't put them there.

For as long as I can remember, my experience of life did not measure up to my expectations. I thrashed about trying to make sense of it all. I've made messes, hurt people, tried things, rejected beliefs and - in the immortal words of Bono - "still haven't found what I'm looking for." A deep, brooding dissatisfaction with life has marked me and colored every day in melancholy shades of gray and blue.

Not long ago, I was reading Jesus's instructions about the things we hold dear: "wherever your treasure is, there will your heart be - so store up treasures for yourself in heaven where they cannot be stolen or rot or rust." I remember responding saying to God something along the lines of: "Help! I don't know how to treasure heavenly things. Please help me do that."

I guess maybe that was one of those dangerous prayers - you know - the kind you shouldn't pray without strapping on your crash helmet. But I prayed it. And today I realized that since I prayed that prayer and since He spoke those words into my head, I have experienced a radical reorientation in my life. I had just finished lunch with a friend, and as we were parting, he asked if he could pray for me. I'm always grateful that anyone would talk to God on my behalf, so I said sure. He then asked me, "what do you want me to pray about?" and it struck me - I have everything I need.

I have lost everything in this world that I counted dear: my marriage, my children, my home and - to some extent - my church. And yet God has not abandoned me. I don't know how I know that, but I do. Even though I am bereft of the things that were most important to me, even though I feel their loss accutely, even though the external circumstances of my life are bleaker than they have ever been, God has not abandoned me. He's here hanging out with me, even as I stumble and bumble through the biggest mess and most difficult, painful experience of my life.

He's not making me feel better - I feel like shit most of the time. He's not easing my circumstances - they suck. He's not vindicating me - my reputation is shot. He's not doing any of the things that I used to think He should do to make me feel loved. Yet I feel more loved than ever in my life.

I cannot explain this except by saying "He is with me." And because He is with me, I just don't care what people think of me. I don't really care if I am doing the right thing in the right way at the right time. I don't care if people think I have gone off the rails, or that I am a lost cause or have abandoned the faith. I don't need to explain. I don't need to defend. I've lost everything I ever thought I cared about, and now I know - even if I never get any of it back again - God is with me.

So I told my friend, "I can't think of a thing to ask of God. He is with me - what else could I possibly need?"

He has become my treasure. He is my reward.

Jamming...

I can hardly wait to see what I am thinking.

I spoke with Robert Capon today, the author of the subversive book Between Noon and Three. He is the first author I have ever found who is willing to say publicly what I have only dared to half-imagine. Grace, as he sees it, really is a the free gift of God to the underserving, and the only possible way to avoid enjoying its benefits is to not believe it. Simple, I know, but profound in its implications...

I have wondered over the last few years why it is that I have always been attracted to the folks who exist on the fringes of cultural normality - the freaks, weirdos, oddballs and assorted socially not-quite-acceptable people. Normal people, while non-threating, tend to bore me. I don't know why I prefer the statistical outliers to the normal folks, but when I look at His creation, I find all sorts of analogues in the natural world. God apparently has a tremendous taste for the bizarre and the weird and the just plain not-normal. How else to explain the platypus, or the venus fly-trap, or tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, cancer, Amos 3:6, crocodiles, dragons, giants, dwarves, the Loch Ness monster?

I know I am wandering back & forth between the nominally real and the nominally imaginary, but where exactly is the border between the two? Chesterton argues that myth is more real than reality, that the realm of the fantastic is where life really lives, and that the world we moderns and PoMos call "the real world" is really just a two-dimensional cardboard replica of the real thing. (Sorry, I don't remember if I got this idea from Orthodoxy or from The Everlasting Man.)

In light of my previous post, and in light of being cut off from the five most meaningful relationships in my life, (and thus losing my gravitational center), I find myself questioning my whole concept of God. It seems He is both far more terrible and far more wonderful than I thought before.

Well, maybe I have thought it before. I remember as a pre-adolescent reading The Chronicles of Narnia and tasting of something so much more wonderful and more awful than myself and my small, constrained little world, something I identified as God expressed through Christ, but the 30 intervening years have pretty well smashed the awe and wonder of that childlike vision out of me. I am so much more sophisticated, more worldly, more cosmopolitan - and yet somehow my world has become so much smaller.

But along comes Genesis and Job and Chesterton and Lewis and Capon and my world is turned inside out, or upside down or something I cannot explain in a straight-line intellect-only dimension. Poetry or song or art might better capture it.

I stumbled onto some poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, (who is apparently no longer in vogue as a poet), and found a beauty and wistfulness there that I had all but forgotten. So I shall sit down with my poetry again, and seek to touch that long-lost chord that Lewis first struck in me when I was 11 or 12, that music which echoed in my soul for years but that the years have likewise silenced, that wonder and awe at the beauty and mystery woven into the very fabric of the universe.

I am alone tonight, as I have been for the last 16 nights, and probably will be for many more nights to come, yet in some undefinable way, I am NOT alone, maybe for the first time ever.

As Robert Capon reminded me on the phone today, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and if I am anywhere at all these days, it is in Him.

A Disturbing God

What makes the Christian faith different from any other, from that of the Jew or the Mormon or the Jehovah's Witness or the Muslim or the Buddhist or the Sikh? Aren't all who fervently hold to their faith determined to be good people, to do good things, to be a positive influence on their world? Quite frankly, I know plenty of Christians who are simply nasty people. (I may be one.) And I know lots of extremely good people who are Jews and Mormons and JWs and Sikhs. So I cannot help but wonder if the behavior of the faithful is not really the distinguishing characteristic of Christianity.

We had a bible study at the office today and read Genesis 39-41 about Joseph, and the leader asked what the story taught us about how we should behave, (I think.) But it seems to me that is the wrong question. Rather than asking, "what does this story teach us about us", it seems to me the right question would be "what does this story teach us about God?" And quite frankly, I find it pretty darned disturbing. Here is a God who was apparently powerful enough to prosper Joseph as a slave and as a prisoner, wise enough to give him the interpretation of dreams, in control enough to cause them to come to pass, faithful enough to be with Joseph wherever he found himself, and yet this exact same God also allowed Joseph to be sold into slavery, allowed him to be cast into prison, allowed the baker to be hung, and allowed the famine to occur. It seems to me that such a God is utterly unlike anything we could imagine on our own. It seems He cares not one whit about pain - He certainly allowed, if not outright caused plenty of it. So the thought of us being "used by Christ" to be nice people in hard circumstances seems utterly laughable.

What kind of God allows a beloved son to suffer from cancer and die at the age of 9? What kind of God says "I am with you no matter what", and then allows or causes all hell to break loose in our lives? What kind of God allows over 100,000 people to be swept away in an instant by a tsunami He darn well could have prevented?

If our job as "believers" is to help people by being nice and not causing pain and helping relieve painful circumstances and bring comfort in pain, then why doesn't our God simply arrange things so that people don't experience hard circumstances? Why in the world would He need me to be a pain-reliever? What lunacy!

I don't know the answer to these questions, but I do know that the God I see in the scriptures is not the tame and kindly old grandfatherly figure much of Christendom seems to imagine and teach. The God in these stories is terrible and wild and utterly beyond our comprehension. He keeps the universe spinning, for pete's sake. Does He actually need us to be nice to other people? The sheer folly of such thinking simply overwhelms me. If He was incarnate in Christ, (and I believe with all my heart that He was), then what do all these things tell us about God? I just don't think it tells us to be nice people, to say nive things and think nice thoughts and be a postive influence. I'm really not sure what it tells us, but a God who names the stars, puts the planets in place, sets the galaxies spinning, builds an earth that wipes out people as if they were nothing more than kindling for a fire, presides over cancer and AIDS and divorce and alzheimers and even became a man and DIED a horrible, humiliating death, such a God certainly has absolutely no need of me for anything. The whole idea of "morality" utterly pales before such a God.

For some reason I keep thinking of that story where Jesus was teaching in somebody's house and these guys cut a hole in the roof and lowered their paralyzed friend through the hole right down in front of Him. Jesus looked at the paralyzed guy and said, "Your sins are forgiven you." And then, because He knew the Nice People, the Moral People, the Upright People, were all pissed off about that and saying to themselves, "who does He think He is", Jesus said to them, "I know you are offended that I granted this man forgiveness for sins. You concept of God does not allow me to do that. So just to show you that your concept of God is completely wrong…" and then He turns to the paralyzed guy and says, "Get up. Take your mat and go home." And the guy gets up. And takes his mat. And goes home.

Who is this God? And how could I dare imagine He needs anything from me? My intellect is not merely humbled, it is driven speechless to the ground where it wallows face down in the dirt. My emotions short circuit from the nearness of His overwhelming power. My very body wants to find a small, dark place to tremble in fear and hide.

This God is not what I would have imagined, not what I would choose, and certainly not what I have been taught.

But I want to know Him. Dear god, I want to know Him...

Old Friends, New Friends

Over the years, I have come to realize that I like weird people. I like the folks who fall outside the bell curve of "normality". Don't know why, all I know is that freaks never freaked me out. I always kinda enjoyed their weirdness. Some folks are weird just for the sake of being weird, and in my mind, they are just poseurs and are as ignorable as the 68% of the population that fits neatly inside the mouth of the bell. But other folks just genuinely look at life differently, and that makes them fun, interesting, intriguing. As the bumper sticker says, "why be normal?"

Alex is one of those people. I've known Alex for several years - we work in the same company and in fact I actually interviewed him when we were hiring. I've always liked him - he's really different. He is very ethnic looking - in actuality I think he is part cuban, part japanese, part I-dunno-what, but he could pass as any number of ethnicities or nationalities. He was raised in Europe, was recruited by the CIA right out of high school and quit his high-paying job as a QA manager for a big Fortune 500 company to become an entry-level programmer. Did I mention he is brilliant, gentle and interesting?

We had a drink together tonight, solved the problems of the world together, and I thought to myself, "why are we not better friends?" I honestly don't know the answer to that question. But I am determined to change that. Alex is an extraordinary man - he challenges my thinking in some ways, and agrees with me in others, but he is most of all his own person.

So tonight I give thanks for a new old friend. To Alex, who dares to be simply who he is. Next time, the drinks are on me.

Return to the Dark Ages?

Those who know what is happening in my life now may find it ironic that I link this article by Joe Sobran, but there it is. I agree with Sobran - the "bright new day" the Progressives envision for us is in practice a dark, dark night. Speaking as one who has been living in darkness for as long as I can remember, I ought to know.

I won't blame "Progressives" for all the societal ills from which we suffer, but they certainly bear significant responsibility for changing our societal paradigm from one which tolerates deviance to one which revels in it. Jonah Goldberg makes the case more clearly than I could.

---

I face an awful lot of fear now. I just wrote a note to my pastor and one of the elders describing all the things that scare me in my life: living alone, being barred from worship, the effects of this situation on my family... Panic lurks under the surface.

The really, really, really weird bit is that I have more of sense of being in God's hands and more sense that He is actively at work to do me good than I have had in a Very Long Time. Go figure.

More Thoughts on Mercy

Mercy comes in painful packages as well.

The last few days have been some of the most difficult, painful and strangely liberating of my life. A personal crisis has forced into the open some issues in my heart that I never recognized, and the recognition has been not merely a revelation but an epiphany. It is as though I had spent my entire life viewing the world through the wrong end of a telescope, always running into things and tripping over things, never really seeing or experiencing the world the way "normal" people do. And suddenly, I understand why.

Now, that doesn't mean the pathology is not still there. But what it does mean is that the first step to finding a solution is identifying the problem. I've been in the IT biz for a long time, and it is axiomatic that you cannot solve the problem if you cannot identify the problem.

Well, now I know the source of the problem.

It's a relief, really, even though my life externally appears to be in worse shape than ever. In reality, what might appear to an onlooker as the first day of a disaster was in reality the first day of healing. Although the metaphorical cancer is still inside me, at least I now know the nature of the problem.

I fight self-pity a lot, which is both self-indulgent and stupid. God is actively at work on my behalf, sorting out the mess that I have made of my life, redeeming that which seems irredeemable, making something beautiful out of something horrendous. I am not in control - He is. But the illusion of control is hard to relinquish.

My family suffers because of me. That is my excruciating reality. Yet they too are in God's more-than-capable hands. I do not understand His ways, but I have reached a point of desparation where I must entrust myself and my family to those ways, opaque though they may be. And in abandoning my delusion of control, I find freedom. Paradoxical, eh?

Mercy in a Strange Package

Today's morning Psalm was number 103. Among the mind-boggling things it says is this:

Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not one of all His benefits -

Who forgives every one of all your iniquities
Who heals each one of all your diseases
Who redeems you life from the pit and corruption
Who beautifies, dignifies and crowns you with loving-kindness and tender mercy
Who satisfies your mouth, (your necessity and desire at your personal age and situation), with good so that your youth, renewed, is like the eagle's.

Sometimes the scripture seems so random, other times it seems as if God had something written specifically for me. This is an instance of the latter.

I am overcome by my own iniquities. I have climbed down into the pit and am trapped in my own corruptiom. My life is hideous, shameful and despicable. I deserve scorn and wrath. I am ever hungry and never filled.

God's mercy is displayed initially in allowing my shame and corruption to be exposed to the light. It is horrible to be exposed as a liar and a cheat. But I am hopeful - very hopeful - that He is faithfully dealing with me as son, cleansing me, forgiving me of my sin and changing my life into one that is an honor to His name.

This is my Body

Consider the fact of your own bodily presence. What is undeniable about you - or about your body? Just this - no one but you can occupy that space at the same time. You can say with utter assurance, "this space is mine". No matter how confined or constrained others may make your space, God has given us our own space that belongs to no one else, and the borders of that space are defined by our own bodies. Silly? Perhaps. But for that person who has everything else stripped from him, there is comfort, however small, in the fact that the space occupied by their body can be occupied by no one else.

Small as this is, I think it speaks to a fundamental truth God has woven into creation. In spite of the virtual nature of so much of our work these days, we are still creatures, not merely consciousness. There is a physicallity to existence that makes each of us unique, no matter how unremarkable we may be. The constraints of space and the borders of our physical bodies both reinforces our alone-ness and our uniqueness.

And this also has implications for those who profess belief as Christians. Our physical presence - together as people - is the format through which Christ is manifested to the earth. Gotta have that body - and all the irritating realities that come with it - living, working, singing, laughing, crying. fighting, forgiving together to incarnate the Word of God in our communities.

Mark Steyn Makes Sense

Steyn on why American conservatism gives us a better chance of surviving a Muslim Revolution than the British Commonwealth and the EU.

Just to remind myself

1. Be proactive. Control your environment, rather than having it control you.

2. Begin with the end in mind. Covey calls this "the habit of personal leadership" -- leading yourself toward your goals.

3. Put first things first ("the habit of personal management") -- organizing and implementing your activities in line with your objectives.

4. Think "win/win" instead of "win-or-lose" ("the habit of interpersonal leadership") -- because personal achievements are largely dependent on cooperative efforts.

5. Seek first to understand and then to be understood -- a habit that is based on the power of communication.

6. Synergize (see "Word to the Wise," below) by exercising the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts ("the habit of creative cooperation"). This habit implicitly lays down the challenge to see the good and potential in the other person's contribution.

7. Sharpen the saw ("the habit of self-renewal"). This habit supports all the other habits and helps you stay physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually fit.

An interesting, (if slightly academic), article on how monetary inflation is destroying us.

Cranky About the War on Terror

When we went to war against Hitler and the Axis powers in 1941, what were fighting for? "Our freedom" seems to be a pretty good answer. Hitler had armies and - at one point - had used them to occupy and subjugate all of Europe. Hirohito had armies and had used them to occupy and subjugate most of Southeast Asia. If either of these two powers remained unchecked, it was quite clear that we were in danger of being occupied and subjugated. In other words, the Axis were a threat to America and to the freedoms we enjoyed as Americans

What terrorist army is threatening to occupy and subjugate America? I know that they could have suitcase bombs - and that is certainly a horrible thought. But I have a question - what if they do? What if they unleash a nuclear bomb on New York? Will we all suddenly decide to become Muslims? Will we bow in abject humiliation and obey our new masters from Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Syria? Will armies of mujahadin lead by mad mullahs suddenly materialize in Phoenix and Los Angeles Atlanta and Nashville, Chicago and Dallas to force our compliance with Islamic law?

Not in a million years.

Terrorists are no threat to America - they are a threat to Americans. They threaten us individually, not corporately. They are mere criminals. Terrorists have no Army they can use to occupy their "conquered" lands. They have no Navy they can use to enforce an embargo of our ports. They have no Air Force they can use to conduct high-level bombing raids on strategic targets. They are nothing more than a small group of well-financed criminals with the capability of doing a lot of damage but NO CHANCE of denying us our freedoms as Americans. The only entity in the world with enough power to deny American citizens their basic rights is the American government.

And that is exactly what is happening to us; happening in the name of protecting us from the terrorists.

Star Chambers
Suspension of the Writ of Habeus Corpus
Virtually unlimited police powers granted the federal police
Destruction of the dollar by the quasi-governmental Federal Reserve
Budget deficits that have saddled our children with unpayable debts
Out-of-control taxation
Out-of-control debt
Out-of-control government growth

If this is the price of Freedom, what in the world would slavery look like? And who would inflict it upon us?

I know of no better way for a couple to learn to work together than dancing.

I have four children of my own ranging in age from 21 to 15. I also teach a bunch of high-schoolers in my living room on Sunday nights. One thing I've learned about dealing with people in general and kids in particular is that you gotta keep it simple. My philosophy as a parent is pretty simple:

1. Make very few rules
2. Make the rules unambiguous
3. Enforce the rules

This has worked well for me & my kids. I think it works because it acknowledges something fundamentally true about humans.

In that vein, Jesus did the same for us. He told us that the entire bulk of the Law & the Prophets was contained in two commands - Love God, Love your neighbor.

Every violation of God's law is a violation of one or both of those commands, right?

I'm no theologian, but I expect that when I am at last fully sanctified, I will in fact love God & love my neighbor perfectly, thus perfectly obeying His Law. Funny thing about love, though - love cannot be commanded. That means God commands us to do the one thing which He cannot coerce us into doing.

Lest I be misunderstood, I fully realize the difference between Love, the squishy affection, and Love, the action that does good to our neighbor. But the command is to Love God and neighbor not just with our strength and mind, but with our hearts as well. You may command my Mind and compel my strength, but sheer force is powerless over the heart.

Seems like there is some sort of paradox here. I can "obey" God's command to Not Steal, Not Murder, Not Commit Adultery, Not Perjure, Not Covet - but if the motivation of my heart is anything other than love, then I am not truly obedient, am I?

Man, am I hosed. Oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ, my Lord.

But what does that mean? What is it that Jesus my Lord has done in light of this question about loving God and neighbor? Just this:

He is with me always, having made His dwelling within me, and is now at work in me not merely to obey His commands, but to want to obey. (Phil 2:13)

This is what the Apostle Paul was talking about when he says that any man who is in Christ has become a new creature. We become people who actually want to obey God and also have to power to obey.

If the purpose of school is to educate children, why are school schedules designed with no regard for the sleep needs of adolescents? Why Teens Need More Sleep

"...high school starts too early for most teenagers, often as early as 7 a.m. Two decades ago, high schools typically opened at 8 a.m. or later in the United States as well as elsewhere around the world." Review: Adolescent Sleep Patterns: Biological, Social and Psychological Influences

"...a teenager's brain typically needs to sleep from 11:00 pm to 8:00 am. However, most high schools require students to be in class as early as 7:15 or 7:30 am. "Should Teens Sleep In?

Is it education, or just school? The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher, by John Taylor Gatto.

...if we wanted to we could easily and inexpensively jettison the old, stupid structures and help kids take an education rather than merely receive a schooling. We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness-curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.

The Odysseus Group - John Taylor Gatto

...the more we ask from the state, the more power we grant it over our lives. And when we rely on force to get what we want, we can be certain that that force will one day be used against us, or in ways we find deplorable.

This from Bretigne Shaffer via Lew Rockwell.com who said it better than I ever could.

How big is too big?

This is a question I've been pondering for quite some time. I know I haven't quite got this figured out, but this is a blog, so it doesn't have to be perfect yet.  Here's what I am thinking:

Is there a size limit to every human endeavor? Is there something hardwired into us humans that makes us incapable of building a large organization that does not abuse its own power? Can you think of any large organization that does not abuse people? I cannot.

Humans band together to form organizations because whatever goal they wish to accomplish is unattainable without cooperation. But what happens when the existence of the organization becomes a threat to the original goal? What happens when, for example, a government that was formed "of the people, by the people, for the people" becomes the single biggest threat to the liberty of those same people?

In a small organization where the raison d'etre for its very existence is still at the forefront of the group's consciousness, it may be apparent that dissolution of the organization is the best way to meet the organization's original goals - or at least the best way to quit screwing up the organization's original vision. A small organization is able to dissolve with a minimum amount of fuss and pain.

But the bigger an organzation becomes, the more it loses sight of why it was formed, and the more self-preservation becomes the dominant goal of the organization.

The mess in Iraq is made far worse by the almost universal insistence that the country of Iraq remain One Country. But why? The reality is that the nation-state the world knows as "Iraq" is composed of three distinct ethnic and religious groups, none of whom gets along with the others. Why then do we insist on uniting them all under a single flag? Why do we not seriously discuss the option of splitting the state into three smaller, autonomous countries? Does it have any thing to do with the human (generally) and American (particularly) addiction to bigness and power?

Closer to home, schools were formed for the sole purpose of educating our children. But as school systems get bigger and control of the schools becomes more centralized, the actual task of educating the young takes a back seat to perpetuating the existence of the schools.

Perhaps you recall that the Republicans promised to disband the Department of Education in their "Contract with America" in 1994. What happened when they took over the house, though? Same ole same ole. No one can honestly argue that the intensified centralization of schools has actually helped to better educate our children, but almost no one seriously advocates decentralization as - if not a solution - at least a step in the right direction.

I don't know if there is a principle involved here or not. But I suspect that there is a natural size limit to any organization - no matter the type. I suspect that God has created us in such a way that we are incapable of creating non-abusive organizations bigger than X. (What X is, I have no idea. But I suspect it is a lot smaller than almost any organization we are familiar with.)

Whether government, business, education or religion, once an organization grows beyond that limit - whatever that limit may be - it loses the human element; it loses its ability to respond to people as people.

On Sunday nights, the high schoolers come to our house for Bible Study. That's not too strange, I guess - lots of folks host Bible studies at their house. But what's strange, to me at least, is that I lead it.

I used to think I knew so much about life and God, thought I had it pretty much all figured out. Then I spent 20 years raising kids, being married, working for a living - and all the things I thought I knew I realized were mostly theories. Life knocked the wind out of my sails.

But I guess I haven't really given up - although I've tried a few times. I just cannot get away from this God Who seems to continue to pursue me. So I ask myself, "What do I KNOW is true? What can I really count on?" The answers are few and far between.

One of the guys I work with recently filed for divorce from his wife of more than 20 years, and it shook me to the core. I can hardly believe the depth of his duplicity, the extent of his selfishness, and the self-delusion in which he is ensnared. I understand getting worn-out with a marriage that just doesn't seem to work. What I cannot understand is how quickly he gave up - and how dishonest he has been about his intentions. Looking back over my last year's worth of conversations with him, it is apparent to me that he never intended to try to work things out. He found a girlfriend and it was the excuse he needed to jettison his wife and kids.

Oh, and he claims to be a believer. He knows what he is doing is wrong, but he also knows "God will forgive". I've had those kinds of thoughts when I chose to go my own way in spite of my certainty that my actions were immoral, but I shudder at the folly of such hubris.

And I guess this is just part of the whole picture - things I see but do not understand. My friend's wife and children are devastated beyond description. The man is utterly lacking in human pity and has proven himself to be completely contemptible. He spent the last year rearranging the family finances so that his wife will end up with less than nothing, half their debts and no source of income. Unbelievable. He acted like he was listening to me as I commiserated with his pain while encouraging him to not give up. But he'd already given up - and let me talk away as if it mattered. Dispicable. He acts as though he's decided to sell an old car, not like he has betrayed wife, children, family and friends.

I understand wanting to quit on a marriage. I don't understand intentionally, systematically screwing everyone involved.

When I pray for his wife & kids, I don't even know what to ask. God knew all this was going down and chose to allow it. It doesn't make sense to me, but I have to say - in spite of my blinding ignorance - God is still in charge and still acting in a loving way.

Last night, I told the high schoolers what I know about faith. The essential part is this: if you can perceive it with your senses, then it doesn't require the saving kind of faith. The saving kind of faith believes in what is not seen, and hopes in that which real, even though it is unperceived by the senses. And God intends that we live in this state of faith all the time - believing that He is acting out of a heart of goodness toward us even when we are betrayed, beaten, unjustly accused, ridiculed. Even when our lot in life is desperate and dire, even when all my senses say "this is a horrible, terrible tragedy". Even in such outrageous circumstances, faith says, "God is good, and is acting in goodness toward these whom He loves even now."

It's more than I can grasp with my mind; I have to apprehend it with my heart. It delivers a knockout blow to my understanding and leaves it sprawled senseless in the dirt. It forces me to believe with nothing but desire - the desire to continue believing that God is good, in the face of all evidence to the contrary.